IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_464.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Flexible Majority Rules

Author

Listed:
  • Ulrich Erlenmaier
  • Hans Gersbach

Abstract

In this paper we introduce flexible majority decision rules where the size of the majority depends on the proposal made by the agenda setter. Flexible majority rules can mitigate the disadvantages of democracies in the provision of public projects. In many cases, the combination of the principles taxation constraint to majority winners, a ban on subsidies, costly agenda setting and flexible majority rules constitute a socially optimal democratic constitution. Flexible majority rules might also be a useful decision-making procedure in other circumstances.

Suggested Citation

  • Ulrich Erlenmaier & Hans Gersbach, 2001. "Flexible Majority Rules," CESifo Working Paper Series 464, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_464
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo_wp464.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Piketty, Thomas, 1999. "The information-aggregation approach to political institutions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(4-6), pages 791-800, April.
    2. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey S., 1996. "Information Aggregation, Rationality, and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 90(1), pages 34-45, March.
    3. Salvador Barbera & Matthew O. Jackson, 2002. "Choosing How to Choose: Self Stable Majority Rules," Microeconomics 0211003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. J. A. Mirrlees, 1971. "An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(2), pages 175-208.
    5. Myerson, Roger B., 1998. "Extended Poisson Games and the Condorcet Jury Theorem," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 111-131, October.
    6. Timothy Feddersen & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 1997. "Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections with Private Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1029-1058, September.
    7. Guttman, Joel M., 1998. "Unanimity and majority rule: the calculus of consent reconsidered," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 189-207, May.
    8. Rae, Douglas W., 1969. "Decision-Rules and Individual Values in Constitutional Choice," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 63(1), pages 40-56, March.
    9. Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1996. "Industrial policy and politics," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 1-27.
    10. John C. Harsanyi, 1955. "Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(4), pages 309-309.
    11. Semih Koray, 2000. "Self-Selective Social Choice Functions Verify Arrow and Gibbarad- Satterthwaite Theorems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(4), pages 981-996, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hans Gersbach, 2002. "Democratic Mechanisms: Double Majority Rules and Flexible Agenda Costs," CESifo Working Paper Series 749, CESifo.
    2. Hans Gersbach, 2011. "On the limits of democracy," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(2), pages 201-217, July.
    3. Bard Harstad, 2006. "Flexible Integration," Discussion Papers 1428, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    4. Emmanuelle Auriol & Robert Gary-Bobo, 2012. "On the optimal number of representatives," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 153(3), pages 419-445, December.
    5. Christopher Cotton, 2010. "Dynamic Legislative Bargaining with Endogenous Agenda Setting Authority," Working Papers 2010-20, University of Miami, Department of Economics.
    6. Gersbach, Hans & Siemers, Lars, 2005. "Can Democracy Educate a Society?," IZA Discussion Papers 1693, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Philippe Aghion & Patrick Bolton, 2003. "Incomplete Social Contracts," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(1), pages 38-67, March.
    8. Moldovanu, Benny & Rosar, Frank, 2021. "Brexit: A comparison of dynamic voting games with irreversible options," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 85-108.
    9. Gersbach, Hans & Grimm, Oliver & Becker, Johannes Gerd, 2010. "Debt-sensitive Majority Rules," CEPR Discussion Papers 7860, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hans Gersbach, 2002. "Democratic Mechanisms: Double Majority Rules and Flexible Agenda Costs," CESifo Working Paper Series 749, CESifo.
    2. Paolo Balduzzi & Clara Graziano & Annalisa Luporini, 2014. "Voting in small committees," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 111(1), pages 69-95, February.
    3. Giovanni Maggi & Massimo Morelli, 2006. "Self-Enforcing Voting in International Organizations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(4), pages 1137-1158, September.
    4. Bouton, Laurent & Castanheira, Micael & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol, 2016. "Divided majority and information aggregation: Theory and experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 114-128.
    5. Felix Bierbrauer & Marco Sahm, 2006. "Informative Voting and the Samuelson Rule," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2006_18, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    6. Bierbrauer, Felix & Sahm, Marco, 2006. "Informative Voting and the Samuelson Rule," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 159, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    7. Ruth Ben-Yashar, 2006. "Information is important to Condorcet jurors," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 127(3), pages 305-319, June.
    8. Felix Bierbrauer & Marco Sahm, 2008. "Optimal Democratic Mechanisms for Taxation and Public Good Provision," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2008_09, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    9. Bierbrauer, Felix & Sahm, Marco, 2010. "Optimal democratic mechanisms for taxation and public good provision," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(7-8), pages 453-466, August.
    10. Micael Castanheira, 2003. "Why Vote For Losers?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(5), pages 1207-1238, September.
    11. Hans Gersbach, 2004. "Fiscal Constitutions," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 3-25, March.
    12. Bhattacharya, Sourav & Duffy, John & Kim, Sun-Tak, 2014. "Compulsory versus voluntary voting: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 111-131.
    13. Christopher Ellis & John Fender, 2016. "Information Aggregation, Growth, And Franchise Extension With Applications To Female Enfranchisement And Inequality," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(3), pages 239-267, April.
    14. Laurent Bouton & Micael Castanheira, 2012. "One Person, Many Votes: Divided Majority and Information Aggregation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(1), pages 43-87, January.
    15. Micael Castanheira & Gaëtan Nicodème & Paola Profeta, 2012. "On the political economics of tax reforms: survey and empirical assessment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 19(4), pages 598-624, August.
    16. Marina Agranov & Jacob K Goeree & Julian Romero & Leeat Yariv, 2018. "What Makes Voters Turn Out: The Effects of Polls and Beliefs," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 825-856.
    17. John Duffy & Sourav Bhattacharya & Sun-Tak Kim, 2012. "Compulsory versus Voluntary Voting: An Experimental Study," Working Paper 492, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Aug 2013.
    18. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-00564976 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Daron Acemoglu & Munther A. Dahleh & Ilan Lobel & Asuman Ozdaglar, 2011. "Bayesian Learning in Social Networks," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(4), pages 1201-1236.
    20. Philippe Aghion & Alberto Alesina & Francesco Trebbi, 2004. "Endogenous Political Institutions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(2), pages 565-611.
    21. Raphael Godefroy & Eduardo Perez‐Richet, 2013. "Choosing Choices: Agenda Selection With Uncertain Issues," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(1), pages 221-253, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_464. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.